[stale2002]

Let's say the government does something bad. Say it starts an unnecessary war or something.

I want people to be free to criticize that without being worried about being targeted by the government or it's supporters.

It is extremely important that people are free to criticize the government, while being as immune as possible to retaliation for that criticism.

[scoopertrooper]

If it gets to the point where we have to fear the government retaliating against us, then that government would have probably already shutdown or blocked the popular social networks.

[colordrops]

It's not a binary development. There are stages to getting to that point.

[stale2002]

Do you think this is new or something?

The government has a documented history of retaliating against people regarding speech issues.

There was a long period, know as "the red scare" in which this happened.

There are many forms of "in between" retaliation, that is in between a democracy and an authoritarian government.

And it is important to also protect people against these in between consequences, by allowing them to be anonymous.

We don't have to straw man the situation, and talk about a dictatorship that kills people.

Instead, we can also say that lesser forms of retaliation are also bad, such as the kind that happened during the red scare.

[scoopertrooper]

The red scare didn't end with the advent anonymity, but rather it was ended by the checks and balances within the government belatedly stepping up to the plate.

Joe McCarthy was censured by congress and fell out of political favour. Furthermore, the Supreme Court handed down a number of decisions that greatly reduced the scope of the government's ability to penalise supporters of communism such as: Yates v. United States, Scales v. United States, and United States v. Robel. This is how such matters should be tackled in a free society, rather than coming up with elaborate mechanisms to hide our views from the government.

[stale2002]

> but rather it was ended by the checks and balances within the government belatedly stepping up to the plate.

Ok, and regardless of that, anonymity still helps people avoid consequences for their speech. Which is a good thing, given that the government has in the past done things like that.

> This is how such matters should be tackled in a free society

Well that is cold comfort to the people who suffered real harm, during the red scare. While other people were trying to solve that problem "the right way", lots of people still suffered harm in the mean time.

Things don't always get solves immediately. Sometimes, problems just exist. And regardless if things have been solved "the right way" or not, other solutions, such as anonymity still help.

None of this stuff is exclusive. Feel free to try and stop government consequences some other way. But regardless of that, anonymity still helps some people avoid some consequences for their speech, which is good.

> elaborate mechanisms

None of this is elaborate. Lots of people have pretty effective ability to post speech anonymously.

Instead, it would be you who would have to engage in large elaborate schemes to prevent people from being anonymous.

The default, easy, non-elaborate solution is what we have now. Which is that there are many platforms where anonymity is easy for most people, most of the time. And that the government would have to take pretty extreme actions to remove that from people, like court orders that don't happen very much right now for most people.

[scoopertrooper]

> Ok, and regardless of that, anonymity still helps people avoid consequences for their speech. Which is a good thing, given that the government has in the past done things like that.

Perhaps, but there is now firm legal precedent that greatly limits their ability to do it again.

> None of this stuff is exclusive. Feel free to try and stop government consequences some other way. But regardless of that, anonymity still helps some people avoid some consequences for their speech, which is good.

Some people should not be able to avoid the consequences of their speech. For instance, people that harass, slander, and threaten others online. Additionally, people that use their speech to obtain money under false pretenses shouldn't be able to hide behind a veil of anonymity. Police officers that enforce the law by day and joke about how much they hate black people and jews while squirreled away behind their keyboard at night should have to own their opinions in the public square.

> Lots of people have pretty effective ability to post speech anonymously.

It's possible with enough tech savviness, but tactics like VPNs are more frail than most people believe.

[stale2002]

> but there is now firm legal precedent that greatly limits their ability to do it again.

There are also the situations of highly targeted minorities that would now be unable to protect themselves, because you've made anonymity illegal. These people really do need anonymity to protect themselves.

And no amount of laws can protect someone from a hate mob attacking them, that doesn't care about the consequences. One of the only ways for many of these people to protect themselves, is to be anonymous.

> Some people should not be able to avoid the consequences of their speech.

I have given pretty good examples where people absolutely should be given immunity from consequences. Specifically people should be immune from consequences if they are engaging in government criticism.

The examples that I gave are great reasons as for why anonymity is important for people.

> It's possible with enough tech savviness

Actually, it is possible with basically no amount of tech savviness. All you have to do is click the create new account button, on twitter, and you have just been given a pretty large amount of anonymity.

In order to have your twitter account de-anonymized, the government has to take pretty extreme actions, such as court orders.

Even if a certain anonymous situation is not 100% foolproof, it is still important that it is available, as it can help most people, most of the time.

It turns out, that simply being able to create an anonymous twitter account, is pretty anonymous, most of the time, for most people.

Also, the original point that I was countering was this "pseudo-anonymous political discourse on open mainstream mass-broadcast social media".

So I am talking about specifically why anonymity, in the form of having the ability to do what people do now, which is create anonymous twitter accounts, and engage in political discourse.

[knaq]

More and more, I realize that I've been fed a warped view of the past. Here in the USA, history book authors and history instructors are almost exclusively on one side of the political spectrum. The people that they glorify and vilify are chosen with extreme partisan bias.

Joe McCarthy wasn't the terrible person he is made out to be. Information discovered later, long after his censure, proves that he was correct in many of the cases where he was thought wrong.

Today's lies and censorship will become the supposed "facts" that are taught to future generations. All sorts of falsehoods will be used to created graded test questions.